Much like Breedbook Rokea, Breedbook Mokole was printed to shovel crap out into the market for White Wolf's second edition. It was printed in 1999, and has an opening comic instead of the novellas that became common in Revised. In the comic, a garou voiceovers about going to the Amazon on the false pretense of fighting The Dissolver, but really to find a cure for some wyrm-curse that gives him strange memories? I don't know, it seriously doesn't really say what he needs cured. But so he goes to find the Mokole who have him smoke a peace pipe (pretty much) to give him a flashback to Amazonian natives fleeing from conquistadors who want a stone in their possession. The natives are mokole, except the woman leading them who is kin. The comic is much like the Rokea comic, with the exception that the people who get attacked by mokole in beast mode are basic humans who have gold bullets (mokole are linked to the Sun rather than the Moon, and so are weak to Gold), not garou in a dinghy.

Table of Contents
Like many White Wolf books, Mokole does not name their chapters helpful things like "The Setting," "Character Creation," "Magic" and so on, but rather shit like "Sunrise: Dragons in our Midst" with the description "An introduction to the Dragon Breed."

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Sunrise: Dragons in our MidstIntroduction

The opening quote for this book about dragon shapeshifters who are primarily associated with South America and Australia in this book, who are Gaia's Cloud Servers (no, seriously), is from The Wonders of the East, which is an Old English prose piece that is basically a bestiary for Asia from when it was still usually called "the Orient."

I'm not saying that a quote from a book about Asia isn't appropriate for a book about dragon-shapeshifters, I'm just saying that I've read this book before and of the two places that I associate with the Mokole, Asia isn't one of them. The asian reptile shifters are the Nagah, which are snakes from India.

Pictured- not the people we're talking about.

Let's fucking face it, White Wolf books are just fucking text templates. The first few pages are a short story, either a novella or a comic, the table of contents follows with prose for chapter titles, and then the intro is fiction that sort of describes what's going on. This intro talks about a guy named Peter who wears Puma sneakers. I don't know why we need to know the fucking brand of shoes he wears, but we do. The totem Dragon basically reached into him and hauled his ass to an airport with packed luggage and put it on a plane without letting him know where the fuck he was going until he was on the fucking plane and, I presume, looked at his ticket to see he was on a plane to Australia to meet a couple mokole. I guess this is a continuation of the comic, since the protagonist werewolf is named Peter in both. He also has the hinted at memory plague, and the narrative goes into telling us that apparently garou and mokole have always been enemies. The garou believed mokole to be extinct until they crossed the ocean and started getting fucked up by jungle dragons.

The mokole characters are named shit like Nyi Feathered-Thunder and Trees Dream, in continuation of Werewolf's tone deaf ethnocentric aping of bad Native American tropes. I have literally no idea whether Australian Aboriginals have names like these, and neither, likely, do you.

Anyway, the fiction that begins the intro ends, much like Chapter 1 of Demon does, by mentioning two things that you will later find out are game concepts, but with no indication of that fact- "Was and Is were one."

The intro then shifts out of story and into straight description to tell you what the mokole are. Thank Fucking Gaia.

But here's why I call Mokole weird fuckers. Garou are werewolves. They are people who turn into wolves and have three intermediate forms that play with the balance of man and wolf in-between. Bastet are werecats, and while there are different tribes that turn into different kinds of cats, they are all werecats, and two members of the same tribe turn into the same kind of cat. Ananasi break this slightly, with a form that combines what would be glabro and crinos, and is customizeable to some extent, but will have broadly the same traits from one to another, and an animal form that is a mass of spiders that can mix types, but ultimately does the same stuff from one member of the breed to another.

Mokole are described as were-dragons, but I've always just called them weresaurians. Their animal forms can be crocodile, alligator or monitor, and while the mokole have something sort of like tribes, called streams, which is really just kind of mokole ethnicity or region of origin, it doesn't dictate which thing is your animal form, just gives you a few choices. Only the Makara of India is restricted to a specific sort of animal form (called Suchid), but it's still "choose a crocodilian native to India" rather than telling you that you specifically turn into a gavial. The crinos-slot form, Archid, is even more different from other breeds, because you fucking build it from traits. And I'll get into specifics when I get to the right chapter, but one mokole might turn into a scaly person with a giant crest, and another might turn into literally Godzilla. You just have to reach rank 3 before you get fire breath. The in-game method by which mokole get their archid form is by dreaming it.

Cool? Undoubtedly. Consistent with the other breeds? Not really.

This is again a place where if White Wolf had better writers, they could have done something really interesting. I mean, mokole are all about being basically biological/spiritual external hard drives for Gaia, and there is some Australia/dreamtime stuff mentioned, but they could have gone all in with it.

Anyway. The book talks about how mokole are strong, yes, but their true purpose is to be Gaia's memory. This is certainly compelling, but it just makes me fucking wish that WW had better writers, again, because the Corax should have been Gaia's spies and her memory, because they could have focused on norse myth and have corax descended from Huninn and Muninn, Odin's ravens. The mokole are primarily creatures of the sun, Helios, and their auspices are sun-based, and yeah, some are born at night. They're mokole ragabash, if I recall correctly.

The mokole are said to be the oldest changing breeds, but take that with a salt lick, because I don't think White Wolf ever actually fucking figured out a time line for Werewolf, and prehistory in the game line is fucking weird. There was a period of time where humans were kept as livestock by werewolves. Humans were made from primates by the Weaver. The time of dinosaurs was the time of the Dragon Kings. One of these days I might sit down with the breedbooks and the core book and figure out the fucking time line, but I'll have to write a suicide note beforehand just in case it kills me.

Probably less complicated than whatever timeline WW thought they had

Mokole don't really have tribes, instead belonging to regional streams that sort of tell you what they may be inclined towards, and what ethnicity of people and types of reptiles a mokole is close to. The rundown in the intro, however, basically tells you two things- 1, there are next to no Caucasian mokole, mokole are mostly aboriginals, Native Americans and Africans, and Asians; and 2, that half of these "streams" count auspice by season, not by the place of the sun in the sky. Because we needed more special snowflakes fucking up internal logic.

Apparently Mokole are the oldest shapeshifters, hailing from the time of the Dragon Kings in prehistory, where humanoid reptiles lived alongside dinosaurs and were Gaia's protectors and priests of the Sun. Then the Great Dying happened, and the mokole died, leaving only kin who were later able to resurrect the race. Never mind the fact that there are hardly any reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and did not evolve in the last 65 million years. But anyway, then the resurrected mokole had a nap for 60 million years so other changing breeds could pop up.

No mention is made of the Rokea. Mokole, however, really should be allies of the weresharks, because a lot of the same themes are present- distrust of the garou, encroaching market economy, standing against the Wyrm without aid from the mammal changing breeds, being the oldest... I'd love to see a prehistory book for WtA that talks about the rokea, mokole, Ananasi, and maybe nagah. Hell, it could even go into the ancient history of the WoD and talk about the rise of the corax and the mammal fera and what was going on exactly. There are hints of really interesting shit going on in the prehistory of WoD, with dragon kings and insect changers and so on, but there's only hints.

Imagine coming home to this, but no one is waiting on the bed at the end. And you live alone.

Mokole are like most of the changing breeds, ie, animal-raping fucks. There are both homid and "suchid" mokole, and they live as the form they were born to until adolescence, where they go into a trance and dream the ancestral memories of mokole and their personal crinos (called Archid) form. One of the things that needs to be noted is that there are gila monster mokole.

Yeah. Imagine that for a second.

The intro closes with a lexicon that gives us just over a two column page of new terms and tells us that mokole had four forms before the Great Dying, but none have been able to take Drachid since then.

I'll try to get chapter 2 done later tonight, but I have work in about an hour and a half and need to do homework after that._________________

Dean, on Paranoia wrote:

The book is a hardbound liars paradox.

Winnah wrote:

No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

FrankTrollman wrote:

In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

Last edited by Prak on Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:32 pm; edited 1 time in total

Apparently Mokole are the oldest shapeshifters, hailing from the time of the Dragon Kings in prehistory, where humanoid reptiles lived alongside dinosaurs and were Gaia's protectors and priests of the Sun. Then the Great Dying happened, and the mokole died, leaving only kin who were later able to resurrect the race. Never mind the fact that there are hardly any reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and did not evolve in the last 65 million years. But anyway, then the resurrected mokole had a nap for 60 million years so other changing breeds could pop up.

If they're descended from dinosaurs, then shouldn't they be birds instead of reptiles?

Really, "Gaia noticed Jurassic Park was popular" would have been a cooler origin story, and less subject to science marches on. That removes the possibility of awesome prehistory, but awesome prehistory only works if you explore it.

Apparently Mokole are the oldest shapeshifters, hailing from the time of the Dragon Kings in prehistory, where humanoid reptiles lived alongside dinosaurs and were Gaia's protectors and priests of the Sun. Then the Great Dying happened, and the mokole died, leaving only kin who were later able to resurrect the race. Never mind the fact that there are hardly any reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and did not evolve in the last 65 million years. But anyway, then the resurrected mokole had a nap for 60 million years so other changing breeds could pop up.

If they're descended from dinosaurs, then shouldn't they be birds instead of reptiles?

Really, "Gaia noticed Jurassic Park was popular" would have been a cooler origin story, and less subject to science marches on. That removes the possibility of awesome prehistory, but awesome prehistory only works if you explore it.

They should be, and there is the option for mokole to have feathers in their Archid form, but, honestly, people are generally going to go for hulking out or social buffs. Feathers might give a social buff, but I can't recall and I'm away from my book atm. Also, going for social buffs in your giant monster form is dumb unless you know for a fact that you're going to be dealing with the beast courts a lot.

If I get around to actually working on Werewolf Redux, I might try to fill out some of this stuff and get mokole, corax and nagah connected.

OgreBattle wrote:

So Nagah aren't Mokole?

Nope. Which is kind of weird, since you could pretty well represent the Nagah crinos form with the Mokole Archid just by taking stuff like Crest, maybe adding some more options._________________

Dean, on Paranoia wrote:

The book is a hardbound liars paradox.

Winnah wrote:

No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

FrankTrollman wrote:

In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

This is again a place where if White Wolf had better writers, they could have done something really interesting.

You could drop this into any White Wolf OSSR and it would be true.

hyzmarca wrote:

Prak wrote:

Apparently Mokole are the oldest shapeshifters, hailing from the time of the Dragon Kings in prehistory, where humanoid reptiles lived alongside dinosaurs and were Gaia's protectors and priests of the Sun. Then the Great Dying happened, and the mokole died, leaving only kin who were later able to resurrect the race. Never mind the fact that there are hardly any reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and did not evolve in the last 65 million years. But anyway, then the resurrected mokole had a nap for 60 million years so other changing breeds could pop up.

If they're descended from dinosaurs, then shouldn't they be birds instead of reptiles?

Really, "Gaia noticed Jurassic Park was popular" would have been a cooler origin story, and less subject to science marches on. That removes the possibility of awesome prehistory, but awesome prehistory only works if you explore it.

Point of order: birds are not technically descended from dinosaurs; there is no point where you could go back through the ancestry of a chicken or an emu and find a T-Rex. Birds and dinosaurs evolved from the same ancestors, and the early birdlike ancestors overlap with when dinosaurs ruled the earth._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

Are there any lizard boobs in the book? Because that's very important to me._________________In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony godís blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.

Point of order: birds are not technically descended from dinosaurs; there is no point where you could go back through the ancestry of a chicken or an emu and find a T-Rex. Birds and dinosaurs evolved from the same ancestors, and the early birdlike ancestors overlap with when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

The ancestry diverges at a point where we're already talking actual dinosaurs, not archosaurids. Velociraptor is more closely related to birds than to tyrannosaurids, and T. rex is still more closely related to birds than to Carnosaurus, and Carnosaurus is more closely related to birds than to Apatosaurus. Even Apatosaurus is more closely related to birds than to Triceratops or Stegosaurus.
So while you can't go back down the emu or chicken family tree and find an actual T. rex, what you can find comes close enough to never view chicken with the same eyes again.

No mention is made of the Rokea. Mokole, however, really should be allies of the weresharks, because a lot of the same themes are present- distrust of the garou, encroaching market economy, standing against the Wyrm without aid from the mammal changing breeds, being the oldest...

And the Rokea book does go, slightly, in this direction, by saying the Rokea at least know more about the Mokole and occasionally talk with the ones that have suitably aquatic forms (saltwater crocs mostly), but there's nothing concrete about it.

Prak wrote:

The mokole are said to be the oldest changing breeds, but take that with a salt lick, because I don't think White Wolf ever actually fucking figured out a time line for Werewolf, and prehistory in the game line is fucking weird.

The Rokea book also claims that maybe the Rokea are the oldest changers, so they can't decide, which is dumb, because the Mokole ought to be able to remember the truth, and any of the breeds ought to be able to just ask some suitably ancient spirit what the truth is.

As for the whole birds/dinosaurs evolutionary connection, it was 1999, and the state of the research at that time was a lot more nebulous. Feathers were thought to be a lot less widespread in theropods than we now know them to have been. The actual ancestor last common ancestor of the modern Aves crown group is buried somewhere deep in the Theropods surrounded by a only bunch of other feathered, bird-like forms that don't lead to modern birds. Precisely where the various transition points between these lineages are located is the kind of thing vertebrate paleontologists get in to science fights over and is also inherently muddled by the fact that cladistics methods that chart relatedness according to evolutionary history don't have a good way of talking about large groups that emerge from within a highly derived group of lineages of some other group that is now extinct. 'Birds are dinosaurs' and 'birds evolved from dinosaurs' are both accurate, but different, statements depending on scientific reference frame.

Thanks for taking up my requested OSSR, Prak. I like the idea of weresaurians like the Mokole, but WW being WW, things get wonky quickly. That's why my mind-scalpel is required whenever I run a White Wolf game in my group, so I can surgically remove the bits that don't work for us.

Are there any lizard boobs in the book? Because that's very important to me.

No lizard boobs, but a few instances of Nat Geo-esque native boobs.

Mechalich wrote:

Prak wrote:

No mention is made of the Rokea. Mokole, however, really should be allies of the weresharks, because a lot of the same themes are present- distrust of the garou, encroaching market economy, standing against the Wyrm without aid from the mammal changing breeds, being the oldest...

And the Rokea book does go, slightly, in this direction, by saying the Rokea at least know more about the Mokole and occasionally talk with the ones that have suitably aquatic forms (saltwater crocs mostly), but there's nothing concrete about it.

Well, that's something... and about all I really could expect of WW, I guess.

Quote:

Prak wrote:

The mokole are said to be the oldest changing breeds, but take that with a salt lick, because I don't think White Wolf ever actually fucking figured out a time line for Werewolf, and prehistory in the game line is fucking weird.

The Rokea book also claims that maybe the Rokea are the oldest changers, so they can't decide, which is dumb, because the Mokole ought to be able to remember the truth, and any of the breeds ought to be able to just ask some suitably ancient spirit what the truth is.

Well, it's totally plausible that there are holes in the Mokole memory because of the Great Dying. I could buy that, and it could even be an interesting metaplot thing. Suitably ancient spirits tend to be pretty aloof.

Quote:

As for the whole birds/dinosaurs evolutionary connection, it was 1999, and the state of the research at that time was a lot more nebulous. Feathers were thought to be a lot less widespread in theropods than we now know them to have been. The actual ancestor last common ancestor of the modern Aves crown group is buried somewhere deep in the Theropods surrounded by a only bunch of other feathered, bird-like forms that don't lead to modern birds. Precisely where the various transition points between these lineages are located is the kind of thing vertebrate paleontologists get in to science fights over and is also inherently muddled by the fact that cladistics methods that chart relatedness according to evolutionary history don't have a good way of talking about large groups that emerge from within a highly derived group of lineages of some other group that is now extinct. 'Birds are dinosaurs' and 'birds evolved from dinosaurs' are both accurate, but different, statements depending on scientific reference frame.

I totally want to see two paleontologists arguing about whether birds are dinosaurs or came from dinosaurs and getting into a fistfight over it.

Ancient History wrote:

Silent Wayfarer wrote:

So if I wanted to make the ultimate owod DMF, would I make a wereshark, weredinosaur (drachid?) or a werewolf?

This is literally the first I've ever heard of mockery breeds. I'm totally not surprised, though I am surprised they're that obscure (though that may be because they're from W20?), but they're still pretty ridiculous. Especially the animals Pentex chose. Especially considering the fact that they can only breed with one or the other of their forms. I can just see Pentex R&D scientists leading a nude and eager volunteer into a room with promises of sex, only to leave him there with a rhino. "The lupines breed with wolves. We're investigating similar methodology." "IT'S A FUCKING RHINO!"

On the other hand, I do have to admit that the Yeren are sort of interesting, mostly in that they are successful, working their way up Pentex's corporate ladder, and have been accepted into the spirit pact by Banes, which seem primarily interested in teaching them very ape-centric gifts, like flinging shit and using someone's art as a voodoo doll against them by wrecking it. I might need to incorporate them into my Werewolf Redux.

Anyway, a mokole that goes all in on being Godzilla is actually pretty DMF-y. Each time they select Huge Size it gives their Archid form +1 stamina, +1 health level and +2 dice to body slam and overbear. Unfortunately it doesn't increase strength like the possessed trait, but it's not bad. Add in one of the various attack form things, and Contact Poison, and you're good to go. For the cost of 12 freebies, you get to turn into a 170 ft tall/long dragon with a soak roll of 12 dice plus your normal Sta (Archid already gives +4 Sta), an attack that does 7 dice plus your normal Str (+3 from the attack trait, +4 from Archid), and a poison that just has to touch someone to paralyze them for 5 minutes/health level, with a damage roll of your stamina. Also, if your contact poison has enough hits to reduce someone to incap (if it were actual damage), that person will die. You have something like a 70% chance of doing that if you spec stamina at chargen._________________

Dean, on Paranoia wrote:

The book is a hardbound liars paradox.

Winnah wrote:

No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

FrankTrollman wrote:

In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

Last edited by Prak on Wed Feb 24, 2016 3:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

I think that the real disappointment with a dinosaur/dragon based book title Mokole is that it lacks a heavy African slant, and introduces hidden African dinosaur/dragons; specifically because the breed name for this book sounds like a direct shout-out to the central African myths of dinosaur/dragons, aka, "Mokele Mbembe"._________________

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.

Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Wed Feb 24, 2016 9:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

No mention is made of the Rokea. Mokole, however, really should be allies of the weresharks, because a lot of the same themes are present- distrust of the garou, encroaching market economy, standing against the Wyrm without aid from the mammal changing breeds, being the oldest... I'd love to see a prehistory book for WtA that talks about the rokea, mokole, Ananasi, and maybe nagah. Hell, it could even go into the ancient history of the WoD and talk about the rise of the corax and the mammal fera and what was going on exactly. There are hints of really interesting shit going on in the prehistory of WoD, with dragon kings and insect changers and so on, but there's only hints.

Now I really want to explore that. Especially considering, if I remember right, that Corax were supposed to be next step in werecreatures evolution.

I think that the real disappointment with a dinosaur/dragon based book title Mokole is that it lacks a heavy African slant, and introduces hidden African dinosaur/dragons; specifically because the breed name for this book sounds like a direct shout-out to the central African myths of dinosaur/dragons, aka, "Mokele Mbembe".

Well, the mokole "stream" from Africa is called the Mbembe, iirc (again, no book in front of me), and a lot of the art is ambiguously african tribal, but it's all just culturally insensitive white boy understanding level. I mean, I can't fault them a ton for it, because I'm a culturally ignorant white queer, so I'm not much better, but still...

Smirnoffico wrote:

Now I really want to explore that. Especially considering, if I remember right, that Corax were supposed to be next step in werecreatures evolution.

It's been a while since I read Breed Book Corax, can you tell me a bit more about that?_________________

Dean, on Paranoia wrote:

The book is a hardbound liars paradox.

Winnah wrote:

No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

FrankTrollman wrote:

In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

The Corax - like the Yeren and I think the Camazotz were unique among shapeshifters in that they weren't literal dogfuckers. Instead of dog-fucking, they made new members by sort of "adopting" them with a ritual that grafted them with an animal-spirit. Which was obviously quite superior to your traditional dogfucking in Werewolf, although it meant they didn't have any Kinfolk as such._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

The Corax - like the Yeren and I think the Camazotz were unique among shapeshifters in that they weren't literal dogfuckers. Instead of dog-fucking, they made new members by sort of "adopting" them with a ritual that grafted them with an animal-spirit. Which was obviously quite superior to your traditional dogfucking in Werewolf, although it meant they didn't have any Kinfolk as such.

Well, Kinfolk are only mildly useful. On one hand, having a network of people who aren't going to flip out when you go full wolfman is extremely useful. It means that you can have backup from people with guns. And it means that you can that you can offload your mechanical and technical needs onto normal people so you can focus all of your efforts onto getting better at hulking out and killing shit.

At the same time, though, most Changing Breeds made terrible use of them, and they're about as likely to want to murder you as they are to want to help you, so that's a wash. I mean, you find out that your grandpa was a werewolf and now you're the sex slave (or third class citizen at best) of a tribe crazy werewolf ecoterrorists. Yeah. I'm with Sam Haight on this, fuck those fuckers.

Really, not having Kinfolk is probably for the best, both in terms of ethics and in terms by not getting stabbed through the heart with a silver dagger while your guard is down. There are other ways to cultivate networks of mortal allies that are more reliable because they actually want to help you, rather than just being forced to due to a tenuous genetic relationship. And it's possible to work around delerium if you're careful, or avoid it altogether if you dumpster dive the rulebooks.

Having an infection vector transformation also means that you can gather a huge network of people who want to become wereravens and will work for it, then promote the best.

Last edited by hyzmarca on Wed Jul 20, 2016 2:47 am; edited 1 time in total

Now I really want to explore that. Especially considering, if I remember right, that Corax were supposed to be next step in werecreatures evolution.

It's been a while since I read Breed Book Corax, can you tell me a bit more about that?

Skipping the dogfucking obsession (seriously guys, the horse is dead), Corax were created by Gaia as werecreature 2.0 - while elder breeds were static, traditionalist and locked in their mindset, Corax are flexible, adaptable and good with tech without going cyberdog way. If I remember right (I should really check the book), the story went that Gaia realised that her older breeds weren't so good after all and she needed some 'patch' (that's the word used in the book) to mend problems. I imagine, that if that's true, ultimately Gaia would replace all were-s with better breeds at some point, which gives a new perspective to the whole War of Rage thing. After all, that already happened once with wereinsects (bees or ants?) when Gaia created a breed with solo purpose of exterminating another breed.

Last edited by Smirnoffico on Wed Feb 24, 2016 11:40 pm; edited 1 time in total